5.
doing the above would show the root folders and going into each would then show you the artist index for just that folder

Note:
while this kinda meets the idea, it does have some things that I dont like,
which are that it will show artist index, for every folder, think folders with subfolders etc.

In the long run, it would be best for twonky to allow for the ability to use conditional tree building
but until then, this is what we got

Im working on a parallel solution, which I havent posted yet, but it involves running multiple instances of twonky
In this new scenario that im working on, you would still have to seperate folders out
but, they would then be totally isolated, and treated as there own entity
once i get the idea typed up, ill post for all to see, as it may be something people might try

Thanks a lot for the replies!
If get this right, this solution would force me to load all music of one category into one folder - which is bound for issues...
The multiple instances in the other thread sound much more interesting, I'll ask some curious questions over there

The other option is to to add it the video container, kind of like before
But instead of just being folders at the root
It would be folders at the video root, and the playlists container at the video root

Now this wont help you in finding it quickly, as youll have to scroll down to playlists
If you change <container name='playlists'
To become <container name='- Playlists -'
It will show up on the top of the list based on the way sorting works

The other way to change the list in which things appear is like this
By adding upnp:originalTrackNumber= to a container
We can make the root video container sort the sub containers bases in track number
of which we just assisgned to the containers

I read your navtree thread and tried scenario 1 (http://twonkyforum.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... 320#p34292) to not show "by folder" but everything that's within this folder at the video root of the navtree, so my Twonky client would show all this content immediately when I choose "Video", not having to click on "by folder".

So I altered the two XML files - MartinsDefault.xml and views-definitions.xml - this way:

I do the following so that the other view.xml files dont make twonky go kaplooey

<view name='base' viewlist='advanced' guilist='advanceddefault'>

you could change it to

<view name='base' viewlist='MartinsDefault' guilist='MartinsDefault'>

2.

All the stuff that exist in the video section of view-definitions.xml just can not be blindy deleted
which is why if you look at the the view-definitions.xml example I showed, I moved it out of the video section
twonky expects the id to exist and be defined, if not, you get blamo
I'm just leveraging that to our advantage

I went ahead and made the changes for you to point it to the martins view
I've attached them below
Let me know if there are any issues or if you have questions about what i changed
which is basically what I just mentioned in the previous post

I already had everything in place - I even saw that you moved the content from inside the video container to the top - but since I could not understand why I would not work if I just deleted the lines I did not try to just move the lines.

it is working on my Buffalo LinkStation Pro V2 (1TB) which displays the following...

Version: 6.0.32
Videos: 346
Server build date: Mar 10 2011 p28

But THE SAME configuration files are NOT working on my Buffalo LinkStation Live (2TB) displaying this...

Version: 6.0.32
Videos: 2187
Server build date: Mar 10 2011 p33

Since the LS Live is the drive with old stuff on it and I am using the other one 95% of the time anyway I don't mind, but it got me curious...p28 & p33...these are seperate builds with the same version?

after moving the contents of "by folder" to the top of the navtree some files were missing - all MKV, more or less the last files to be displayed (alphabet) - but when I move then at least one folder downwards TMS immediately has them.

They will not be shown on my WD TV Live HD or both TMS web pages, so I guess they are really not in TMS' database.

I reverted my configuration back to standard "by folder" - I don't want to get into trouble with my wife

Yeah there is some odd stuff with using the buildon='res' command
and how it builds the container
It gets worse if you use it outside of the video container
meaning, makeing the by folder a root container like video, music, photo's are
in essence a 4th container

I hope we see some improvements on navtree's in the upcoming 6.1
and I hope we dont have to wait to 7.0 to see things change

I've got a so called Abeo-H2003 "Internet Radio Adaptor". The Internet-Radio-part plays fine. But the little machine should also work as an UPNP mediaplayer. And that is where the difficulties start.

The Abeo has great difficulties with navigation trees. Most of the time it looses direction in it. Where it should come with songs, it sometimes comes with completely different albums, or it is starting over again with the 'music' map.

This great and interesting forumthreat gave me the opportunity to try some different navtrees. It came out that the Miktle-test-4 gave pretty good results. Better than ever before. The Abeo seems to work now, under one strong condition: I may not use any subdirectories. I have to place all my musicalbums directly in the music-map. I cannot make any diversions like 'classical' or 'Beatles', or 'CD1' and 'CD2'. So I have a long list of >1000 foldernames now.

I did a little experiment. I reduplicated one single music map, and placed it in a subdirectory. As expected I could play the songs placed in the maindirectory (music -> albumdir -> songs.mp3). But I could not play (most of) the songs in the subdirectory (music -> subdirectory -> albumdir ->songs.mp3). The Abeo showed (in this case) only the first song - but as a map.

With telnet I can see that the Abeo stores tree-information in a file called upnpdir.dat. This is what it showes:
Example 1 - album in maindir - works (shows and plays all songs):

Example 2 - album in subdir - does not work (shows only first song 'overture', as a map):
0$263$264$OvertureOvertureO0$8I16650.mp3The Ballad of Mack the KnifeO0$8I16906.mp3Mr. Peachum&apos;s Morning HymnO0$8I17162.mp3Instead-of SongO0$8I17418.mp3Wedding Song for Poor PeopleO0$8I17674.mp3Cannon SongO0$8I17930.mp3etc. etc.

Does anybody have any idea what could e the cause of errors like these - and how to construct the Twonky xmls in a way that this error will be overcome?
TIA
JDZ

Hi, Thanks for a fantastic post that has really helped people out. Unfortunately much of the code and how it works goes right over my head, and I am not trying to do anything fancy but it relates to your opening premise.

By default the view-definitions.xml contains 3 major sections that MUST exist "music,picture,video"
By default the view-definitions.xml contains predfined containers base off of "fixed id strings" ex: video/folders
If for some reason you dont have all of the above conidtions met, bets are that a navtree wont be displayed

I am using Twonky Server to stream to two Bravia TVs. However the rub is in the way the tree is displayed on the TV cross bar. Like the playstation 3 you can navigate side to side across the menu bar and choose Analogue TV, Digital TVPictures, MusicVideo etc.
Under the Twonky Server by default you get under Music sub folders for Video, Music and Pictures, under the menu for Video you get sub folders for VideoMusic and Pictures and the same again for the Pictures menu.

This is a bit confusing as nothing will display if you choose pictures under the Video option or video under the Pictures option. Is there a way to modify the tree menu to display only the appropriate sub folder under each option or ideally no sub folder at all so that when you choose Twonky Server under Video you only see the sub folders By Date, By FolderBy Title etc,
If the folders cannot be removed can they at least be hidden? Perhap this has already been acheived by someone but I have trawled through various posts and forums and can't find what I need.
Regards
Fozzie

Many streaming media client devices just enumerate the root folders of a DLNA server
As you already know, this is what you are seeing with the PS3
There are a couple of devices (an xbox for example) wich actually do navigate
to the appropriate media type off of the root folders of a DLNA Server
But the xbox is limited in media file type support, so it isnt the best choice as a client

If all you want to use the PS3 for is Video streaming from Twonky
then either of the two below tweaks will do the job
(note: if done, then under photo or music, you will see what the video tab see's
so in essence you wont be able to stream them to the ps3)

Hi Philberton,
Many thanks for the quick reply.
Unfortunately either I dont quite understand your reply or I have not explained the scenario adequately.

I am streaming from a Windows Home Server directly to a Sony Bravia tv(s), not to a PS3. The only reason I mentioned this is that as both are made by Sony the menu bars are almost identical and may have been more familiar to you.

I wish to stream video, photos and music to my TV but as I tried to explain using the default Advanced Media View and on the media sharing section selecting Only video for Video, Only music for Music etc I still get three folder under each of the media types.
To demonstrate please see photos of TV screen:-Playstation like menu barhttps://skydrive.live.com/?docsf=1&BICI ... =documents

What I am trying to achieve is either a single folder under each media type ie Video under Video menu, Music under Music menu etc or better still just the sub categories ie under Video Menu All Videos, By Date, By folder etc and under Photos All Photos, By Folder, By Date etc etc.
Will any of your scenarios achive the above result?
Fozzie
ps sorry for messy post but you cannot upload images on forum and I had to do a quick and dirty to Skydrive

salsaholic wrote:Hello Phibertron,
wow, this is an impressive thread!
Do you know if the following would be possible:
Offer a few different options in root like "ChildrensMusic", "Classical", "Mainstream", which all point to different (sub-)directories. From there on I would like to see the normal navigation options (or just some of them), like "artist/album", "by year" and so on.

Hi Salsaholic

I was reading this post chain and was pondering the idea (unsuccessfully), then someone asked the exact same question on the Linn forum!

I don't think there's an easy way to do it by folder segregation, but I have done something similar in that I have a copy of my NAS at my mother's house (with 24,600 FLAF files) and have come up with a way to separate a bunch of albums she likes (so she can find stuff without having to deal with thousands of my rubbish albums).

I've copied the post below, and in the example below, you could use "-ChildrensMusic", "-Classical" and "-Mainstream" in place of "-Person 1", "-Person 1" and "-Person 3". The thing is that this is only really useful when using my custom tree packs (which have been designed to cater for large music collections) as in these, I have designed a bespoke genre container to cater for it (well, it was actually designed so I could use genre/composer/album and genre/composer/artist etc, but it also works well for the below scenario).

In case you are interested, I've below this are the links to the two tree packs that would make this fly, and below that is a copy of my Linn forum post which describes how you can do it via the multiple genre featrue.

Tree pack downloads (you'll likely want the second pack; the first pack is for folks who wish to use the album artist tags).

NB Though the custom containers only show in advanced media view, don't be tempted to delete the [now somewhat 'minimalized'] standard PV ones from view.definitions as they not only ensure greater device compatibility, but their presence also significantly decreases the db rebuild times; counterintuitively, removing them actually slows things down! Note that they're also only applicable to music (the picture and video containers are both the usual PV advanced ones) and they only add real value if your music tagging is in high order (I do like my caveats) but all that said, the below concept does actually work.

My Linn forum post

Hi

I'm having a think about this and nothing is springing to mind as an obvious solution. I can see the potential attraction of the idea, the obvious for me being that I could separate my compilations (of which there are lots) and browse either the comps or the single artist albums. Another use could be for my mother's NAS (there's no point in her having to wade through all that techno, house, punk, etc). On the flip side, it means you have two places to search for things instead of one.

I don't think there's a way to do this at the moment, and the nearest you can get is to use the multiple genre feature to combine groups of albums, but due to the work retagging them, this is only really suitable for ring-fencing a small group of albums. I've done this to cut the 'browse' quantity for my mum's system, I've created a new genre with her name (and a - in front of it; that takes it to the top of the list).

This is better described by example, so in the above case, I could create a genre called -Person 1 and another called -Person 2 (then appended these to the existing genres). So to take that rather splendid Linn 24/192 Beethoven 3, 4 & 5 album, the genre entry for it could be as below:

Classical,Classical - Piano,Chilled,-Person 1,-Person 3 (not the lack of spaces between the terms)

From small sections copied from my actual genre list, that album would appear in -Person 1, -Person 3, Chilled, Classical and Classical - Piano, but not anywhere else (so not in -Person 2).

By doing it that way, it means you can still browse in the normal way as that album is still under 'Classical' etc, but also means you have people-centric containers (right at the top of the list) to give them swift access to their favourites. Given that entering the Genre container in my tree gives you the below options (in other words, the below is the new sub-menu that you see after selecting your genre 'filter' of '-Person 1' etc):

-Album Artists-
-Track Artists-
-Composers-
-Albums-
-List Tunes-

It means each person has a very comprehensive selection music pre-filtered to only the albums they like (so clicking on -Albums- will only show their favourite albums). Of course, it still means they can access the albums in the normal way (from the 'upper' containers) so it's not going to hide any swearing albums from your kids; I don't have kids and thus that's okay for me

Bri

Last edited by Briain on Wed Sep 14, 2011 8:26 am, edited 14 times in total.

New here and tired to find good navtree but no luck... Should those XML on this thread install just by replacing the advanced.view.xml and view-definitions.xml on the TwonkyMedia\resourcs\views and replacing the old ones and selecting the "advanced view" on websettings?

I have tried to find very easy and simple xml code to show my navtree way i would like it should be done.

I'm using my computer + buffalo harddrives as file storage and multiple folder on a different disks.
Heres what I would like it to show when I start my Lacie HD and select mediaserver(twonky)... Some thing or just like on a computer style... On the root! like my example..

I can't speak for all the hints and tips (and files) on this thread as I haven't tried them. For my ones (a couple of posts up) they are a complete package (of XML files) to directly replace the original files in the /resources/views folder. If experimenting yourself, the best thing to use is Notepad++ (and it's free) as that not only shows the layout correctly, but it also shows links between the container starts and closures (in the form of purple vertical lines) and thus shows up any mistakes (I'm good at mistakes and thus find that invaluable).

It also gives the option to save them in Unix 'End of Line' (EoL) format and thus in the correct format for Linux based NAS devices.

Hi all,
I am still trying to get a definitive answer to my question posted to Philberton.
In order for the Navtree to work at all is it critical that you have the three root folders under each media type eg
Under Video there are Music, Photo and Video folders under Music there are Music Photo Video folders etc. or is this just how my Bravia TV displays the tree.
All I want to do is remove the two non applicable folders under each media type so under Video all I have is a Video folder containing sub folders and the same for music and photos. Surely this is not impossible to achieve?
Are there any Bravia TV owners out there that have cracked this?
regards
Fozzie

I'm mostly happy with the default navigation, except that when I am in "Artist / Index" or "Artist Album" and have multiple albums by an artist, the albums are sorted alphabetically rather than chronologically. I would prefer that the albums be sorted chronologically (Neil Young / Everyone Knows This is Nowhere / After the Gold Rush / Harvest / etc.).

Can anyone post a Navtree so that I get Artist / Album and Artist / Index / Album sorted chronologically? I am using TwonkyServer 6.0.32.

I use the wd my book world edition II with twonky media server 5.1.9. In the folder view the music files are sorted by trackname (id3tag) and the videos are sorted by date (it doesn't matter if I access via tv (panasonic tx-p42gw20) or via pc over webinterface).
Is there a way to get the directories and files appear just as they are on the nas (sorted alphabetically by file name)?
I've read a lot of posts in this forum, but not yet found a solution for my problem. the various scenarios don't seem to work well for my problem.
I hope someone can help.

Hi guys, well I finally found out the reason for the multiple root folders. Shame I only got response and a solution from another forum!
Its related to the dlna standard which presumably dictate the number of root folders for each media type.

Looks like twonky developers haven't seen it as a priority for users? Unlike serviio who have just released version 0.6 which effectively hides the folders by tricking the transcoder. Needless to say I have reluctantly abandoned twonky server and installed serviio and I am really pleased especially the thumbnails for videos.
Fozzie

Yes and I have tried sooooo many variations on this post and other post i could find, but the common problem is that when I want to seek out a photo or video it just shows ALL OF THEM in a lump.

Hope you understand sample...

I know that the video is in D:\Video\Youtube\*artist* and on Youtube folder has 20 folders only like Fav.,Dance,Dance 2, Rock

But it adds all the video files on D:\ + all the others folders videos from E:\ F:\ Same thing in music and photos.

IF i just could browse my system like PC ?? There should be that feature style from the beginning. Thats the basic folder view style that everyone uses everery day on PC !!

OR is the any other program like twonky (simple and easy and fast to change settings) that has already that feature viewing style ?

Thanks for the replies

One possible way to sort of achieve this, is to modify your video sources in two ways

1.
you would have to move all existing folders into a sub folder

for ex:

If I had a source folder of d:\videos\ with sub folders, I would create a sub folder called D
and would now have d:\videos\d\ with sub folders

2.
you would then modify twonky to include this point "d:\videos\"
doing step 1 and then step 2
would show "D" when looking under folders,
and you could then drill down from there

for ex:
say you had an additional drives E
say on drive E you had videos in e:\mysuff\video
you would create a folder in video called E, and move all videos into it
so E was the only folder in it, and all sub folders below it
if you then added "e:\mystuff\video" as additional share to the video section
when viewing by folder you would see at the root D and E
and could drill down accoridngly

Sure this tactic makes one have to modify the share structure,
but it is the only way I can think of to achieve the output at present

Note
for ex:
say you had a 3rd drive of F just like E
say it had f:\mysuff\video
if say you created a subfolder of E as opposed to F
in foldre view you would only see one E,
as twonky concatenates folders it sees at the same level
which can be a good thihng or a bad thing =)

Fozzie Bear wrote:Hi guys, well I finally found out the reason for the multiple root folders. Shame I only got response and a solution from another forum!
Its related to the dlna standard which presumably dictate the number of root folders for each media type.

Looks like twonky developers haven't seen it as a priority for users? Unlike serviio who have just released version 0.6 which effectively hides the folders by tricking the transcoder. Needless to say I have reluctantly abandoned twonky server and installed serviio and I am really pleased especially the thumbnails for videos.
Fozzie

the standard doens dictate it the rigiidly, its the clients that do
but it can still be manipulated to show a lot
what cant be changed is how the top parent works
for ex: on a ps3 when going to the video nav bar
it will show what is on the network, as devices,
it can not be hard coded to a device
many devices work this way

sadly all software and hardware have +'s and -'s
sometimes its pick your poison, and sometimes its pick you preference

I use the wd my book world edition II with twonky media server 5.1.9. In the folder view the music files are sorted by trackname (id3tag) and the videos are sorted by date (it doesn't matter if I access via tv (panasonic tx-p42gw20) or via pc over webinterface).
Is there a way to get the directories and files appear just as they are on the nas (sorted alphabetically by file name)?
I've read a lot of posts in this forum, but not yet found a solution for my problem. the various scenarios don't seem to work well for my problem.
I hope someone can help.

like the previous post i just replied to
youll have to modify the defeault sort criteria in the music section in the xml

I'm hoping someone cn help me with a view I require for browsing video files through my 360 because most of the tutorial goes over my head. I have three differenct 'Videos only' shares setup in Twonky on my WHS; the existing Videos as well as Television and Movies, each of these points to a seperate share on WHS ie D:\Shares\[folder]. When I select TMS from the videos screen on my 360 all I'd like to see is each seperate share (Videos, Television, Movies) and when I select either I see the folder structure of that share. EG select Television see folder list TV series 1, TV series 2, etc

Is this possible? I really thought Twonky would be capable of doing this by default given it allows for multiple shares to be setup

When twonky is told to look at a folder/share it usually does not include that path as the starting point,
this is even further compplicated when it is pointed to multiple folder/share starting points
I know this doesnt make sense yet, but I had to get that point out so that hopefully the following makes sense.

A. In the case of a single folder d:\shares\videos for video

If you browsed via twonky from any client the "By Folder" would return a list of folders in d:\shares\videos
but never the folder Videos itsef as the parent where you would have to drill down like in explorer

If you browsed via twonky from any client the "By Folder" would return a list of folders from all 3 shares
and yes again it would never return the root parents in the list
It would though give a concatenated list of sub folders in all 3 shares
which is even further complicated by the following:

If you had a folder d:\shares\videos\favorites and also d:\shares\movies\favorites
you would only see one "favorites" in browsed by folder list returned by twonky
becase the twonky is concatenateing the list and they at the same level off of the root shares

Note:
The semi-exception to the above is if one uses the "By Album"
and a video file is literally in one of the root folders and not a sub folder off of the root
it will return the name of the root folder
however, the returned list would still be concatenated, and would not be a tree list
it would be a complete list of all folders that had video, not what you wantr

So what are your choices with what I just talked about...

Choice 1.

You can keep using the multiple shares, and not have to change anything,
but you will have to create create sub folders in them and move all the content into that folder
this will make "By Folder" return those as the 3 root folders for real

move all content of d:\shares\videos to d:\shares\videos\videos
move all content of d:\shares\movies to d:\shares\movies\movies
move all content of d:\shares\television to d:\shares\television\television

Choice 2.

You can not use the two additional shares, and just one share, still have to move folders though

move all content of d:\shares\videos to d:\shares\videos\videos
move all content of d:\shares\movies to d:\shares\videos\movies
move all content of d:\shares\television to d:\shares\videos\television

Choice 3.

You could use d:\shares\ as the root in twonky BUT!!!
you will have to edit the ignoredir= in the twonky server.ini to include a list of folders
to not look at for content

I use Choice 2, I also run a WHS =)
I go a step further and in videos\videos I have sub folders for each genre

Yes this all sounds like a move from the department of redundancy department
But it is what it is
And yes when looking at the share via \\server\videos
it would see \\shares\videos\videos \\shares\videos\movies \\shares\videos\television

a 4th choice could be to use choice 2 with a twist
and is to repoint on whs the shares for videos to the respective new folder in the d:\shares\video
and for the movies and televsion shares
so you would then have the appearance as if things had never changed from a \\share point of view
on your network, while still gaining what you want from twonky

First a big thanks for your work - really helpfull.
I found some approaches for my main problem - to have seperate root selections for music and audio books (both mp3).
Some experiments with folders looked promising, but finally do not exactly what I want.
The goal is to have them strictly seperated and to have different lower level selection criteria for them ( e.g it makes no sense to list all audio book files alphabetically or list all audio book files from one author. Not to talk about namings - for music an artrist is the same like an author for audio books).
The best approach seems your idea to run multiple instances of TwonkyMediaServer. But I am afraid to overload my FritzBox where Twonky is running on.
Two other possibilities may work as well:
1. As I do not need video, could it be possible to place the audio books into a modified video section
2. To use multi genres, if containers could differenciate between position of genres

I tried 1. but did not get it to work. I tried it before I found your post and am sure that I did not obbey all the rules that you found. So this may be the reason why it did not work.
Question: Do you think that it could be possible to make the video section handle mp3 files ?

For the second approach this only would work as wanted, if it would be possibe to create genre containers that only look for the first genre and below that to create genre containers that only look for the second genre ...
Question: Did you ever experiment with this and possibly found a way to do so ?

Another question you may have stubled over. For music I like to set my player to shuffle, which brings me into great trouble, if my wife starts an audio book without knowing what shuffle is.
Would it be possible to assign anyhow the shuffle / no shuffe mode to the views ?
I know, this is more a client question but who knows - may be there is a way to control the clients mode.

Of course any other thread reader is also invited to add his ideas here - it seems I am not allone with that needs

I wish this directory structure to be used verbatim by TwonkyServer, regardless of content type. I believe that would require scenario 9.

The directory D:\STORAGE is added with the 'all content types' option and I have replaced the two files that come in the zipfile for scenario 9.

Now, after rebuilding the database the TwonkyServer HTML browser shows only the '!_NEW' directory at the root and my Mvix does not show anything for the media server.

I have tried adding each individual directory to TwonkyServer (D:\STORAGE\!_NEW, D:\STORAGE\GUESTSPACE, etc., etc.), but that results in some (apparently random) files at the root in the HTML interface and still nothing via my Mvix.

nevermind the stuff below - I am modifying scenario 11 to get the results I want and no trouble seeing the html Browser (interestingly, for a while the java browser disappeared)

I hope this is trivial - I just wanted to keep my music folders for my various users separate (eg a folder named music with folders under it named jim, judy, and bob). It seemed that your scenario 7 worked fine except it only works correctly in twonkymanager and the flash version of Media Browser on server. The html version of Media Browser and my Sony Bravia TV only show music and just one of the users under it. If I rename the user folders and/or try capitalizing some I get different users showing up (sometimes 2).
I am running version 6.0.38 on a linux openfiler NAS.
eagerly anticipating your wise and knowledgeable response
jim